Hoosier

I am far more concerned about this scenario... a late/east developer (of the secondary low)... than it coming far enough west to rain on us.

I don't know if the reactions have been widespread enough to cause people to be scared away at this point, especially when you consider which groups are currently able to get the vaccine... people who are more likely to be exposed to covid and/or have more severe outcomes (generally only healthcare workers and nursing home residents). Where it could have more of an impact imo is with people who are younger/healthier and already more on the fence about getting the vaccine for whatever reason, but it depends on how big of an issue this becomes. The media need to be careful with how they cover things like this. You want to report the adverse reactions but not overdo the coverage.

Just realized there was a total solar eclipse in South America a few days ago. You'd never know it based on the coverage or lack of. We actually just passed the halfway point between the 8/21/17 and 4/8/24 total eclipses.

A guy I know from high school was charged with murder in the death of his girlfriend. Not somebody I knew well, but we played basketball and hung out a little. Innocent until proven guilty and all that, but he probably did it. She supposedly told her friends that he was abusive and an autopsy revealed old and new injuries, so it appears there were multiple incidents over a period of time. Another acquaintance from high school became a child molester. Pretty unbelievable actually because my circle of friends/acquaintances back then was fairly small. Try to contain your shock when learning that my small stature in middle school and into high school as well as deep interest in science -- especially wx, of course -- wasn't exactly favorable for being Mr. Popular. https://www.nwitimes.com/news/schererville-man-charged-in-beating-death-of-girlfriend/article_cb67074e-221c-5547-a4b9-c038dfcee22c.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1

Another serious allergic reaction in Alaska. https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2020/12/18/3rd-alaska-health-care-worker-experiences-adverse-reaction-to-covid-19-vaccine/ This is starting to get a little strange. Not like Alaska is a very populated state (ranks 48th in the US). Either a coincidence or something else is going on. I would be curious to know these people's backgrounds to see if there is any sort of commonality that could possibly predispose them to allergic reactions, whether ethnic or something else.

Btw, IHME has California with an average of about 650 deaths per day roughly 6 weeks from now. Obviously could get even worse than that if they don't get it together quickly...

New IHME run went up, unsurprisingly. We were talking about it underdoing current deaths on the previous update. Now it has almost 562k deaths by April 1. The peak daily occurs just after New Year's at almost 3800 per day before going down. Keep in mind that IHME is a smooth curve that does not account for drops in reporting due to weekends so that ~3800 number would imply some days over 4k deaths around that time.

Not even close, lol

A chilly Christmas looks pretty well locked at this point. Hopefully we can lay down a little snow, but even if so, it doesn't save the crap month around here. Kinda like losing and hitting a 3 at the buzzer to lose by less.

On the subject of the upcoming 1991-2020 averages... Despite the slight decrease in average December snow in Chicago that RC mentioned, it appears that the yearly snowfall average may go up slightly if I'm looking at it right. Having an 82" output in 2013-14 helps.

I think the return rate on 10"+ storms for Chicago is like once every 2.5 to 3 years, but I could be a little off. If that is right, then yeah, you could say that we're "due"

Crazy storm out there. And I don't know about you but I take slight satisfaction that those kind of totals happened well inland and not in the I-95 cities.

In the article I linked last night, a vaccine expert suggests it may be the polyethylene glycol that is in the lipids that encase the mRNA. Moderna used a similar thing that also contains polyethylene glycol (not exactly the same lipids though) so we'll see what happens as that one gets out into the public.

There's some weird stuff going on with Indiana's hospitalization stats lately. There was the big 1 day spike in covid hospitalizations the other day. Then there was a pretty significant increase in the non-covid ICU numbers. Now today, the covid ICU number dropped by like 170 (talking ICU, not total covid hospitalizations). The ICU covid number has never really fluctuated by more than 50-60 in a day, and often less than that.

Guy is still on the loose btw, and it's turned into an even bigger story around here because it is obvious that the company who was responsible for transporting him (it was not local/county/state police) was lax with their procedures and then tried to lie about how it happened... there is surveillance footage that contradicts their account of the escape. Good luck trying to find this guy in public now in the era when you can wear a mask and blend right in.

Good stuff I have only seen 4" in an hour a couple times... both were LES. I'm talking about an actual measured 4" in an hour, not something like 1" in 15 minutes that would extrapolate to 4"

I wonder how many people have gotten the Pfizer vaccine so far, whether in or not in a trial. We know it would be sort of a small number, relatively speaking, compared to how many will eventually get it. There could end up being hundreds if not thousands of these types of occurrences over the long haul unless the formula is tweaked. The good news is that these reactions are being caught quickly so that people can be given proper treatment. The larger point though is that this stuff apparently wasn't caught in the trial, which is why I am happy to not be one of the first in line to get this vaccine. Many, many millions will have gotten it before my turn comes up. Can't rule out that some other 1 in 50,000 or whatever type of side effect will reveal itself at some point. Odds like that are long but it means it happens every once in a great while.

Maybe one of the more severe allergic reactions to the vaccine that we've heard about so far. This woman had no history of allergies and her symptoms kept coming back. Alaska Health Worker Had a Serious Allergic Reaction After Pfizer's Vaccine WASHINGTON — A health care worker in Alaska had a serious allergic reaction after getting Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine Tuesday, symptoms that emerged within minutes and required an overnight hospital stay. The middle-aged worker had no history of allergies but had an anaphylactic reaction that began 10 minutes after receiving the vaccine at Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau, Alaska, a hospital official said. She experienced a rash over her face and torso, shortness of breath and an elevated heart rate. Dr. Lindy Jones, the hospital’s emergency department medical director, said the worker was first given a shot of epinephrine, a standard treatment for severe allergic reactions. Her symptoms subsided but then reemerged, and she was treated with steroids and an epinephrine drip. When doctors tried to stop the drip, her symptoms reemerged yet again, so the woman was moved to the intensive care unit, observed throughout the night, then weaned off the drip early Wednesday morning, Jones said. He said the woman felt well, remained enthusiastic about the vaccine and was set to be discharged later Wednesday. Although the Pfizer vaccine was shown to be safe and about 95% effective in a clinical trial involving 44,000 participants, the Alaska case will likely intensify concerns about possible side effects. Experts described the woman’s symptoms as potentially life-threatening and said that they may prompt calls for tighter guidelines to ensure that recipients are carefully monitored for adverse reactions. Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert and member of an outside advisory panel that recommended the Food and Drug Administration authorize the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use, said the appropriate precautions are already in place. For instance, he said, the requirement that recipients remain in place for 15 minutes after getting the vaccine helped ensure the woman was quickly treated. “I don’t think this means we should pause" vaccine distribution, he said. “Not at all.” But he said researchers need to figure out “what component of the vaccine is causing this reaction.” Dr. Jay Butler, a top infectious disease expert with the Centers for Disease Control, said the Alaska case showed the monitoring system works. The agency has recommended that the vaccine be administered in settings that have supplies, including oxygen and epinephrine, to manage anaphylactic reactions. https://www.yahoo.com/news/alaska-health-worker-had-serious-012800134.html

I wonder how the LTC facilities are doing the vaccine. Are they doing all the residents at once or doing it in phases? It matters more if your employees have side effects and have to miss work than if the residents have some side effects.

California is definitely becoming a trainwreck. It's not just putting up big numbers due to having 40 million people. The per capita numbers are getting worse and worse. Even if nobody else in the country surges, California is going to keep the national numbers propped up high for quite a while.

Been getting just a little bit of snow here throughout the day.

Gotta feel for the healthcare workers. I mean, you know you are going to encounter things in that line of work, but the scale is probably something they didn't imagine. People talk about mental health of those on the outside during these times, but how about the mental health of the healthcare workers who are dealing with this stuff on a daily basis? They are often with covid patients as they die since visitation by family members generally isn't allowed. There are probably going to be lasting mental health consequences for those people long after things start to get back toward normal.

Some things are still the same in 2020.

New York state was getting 800-1000 deaths per day at peak. Don't think we'll get that high in California unless there's consistently about 50k cases per day or more.

Article about which groups are most reluctant about taking the vaccine: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/15/health-202-some-americans-will-refuse-coronavirus-vaccines-who-where-they-are-matters/ In short, self-identified Republicans, people in rural areas, people in their 30s and 40s, and African Americans. The reasons are likely different. For Republicans, it's because they are more likely to think the virus is not a big deal. People in their 30s and 40s probably don't feel as threatened on a personal level. For African Americans, it may be rooted in things like the Tuskegee Study.